def II

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tampa

I understand your not wanting to provide free advertising, but you fail to understand how you go about it diminishes the value of the firms that do spend money with you.

By censoring the likes of def, you call into question anything paying sponsors have to say.

I for one am bitterly disappointed in your decision. I have two options available. 1) to leave the board, and 20 to refuse to read any post from a known sponsor. In either case you lose, and so do the people who pay you.
 
Baron,

Earlier you closed the IB Improvements part 2 thread, but not before having removed a post of mine that talked about the censorship of Def.

The alleged reason: the thread was too long.

Is that your reason for closing the "def censored...that sucks ..post your opinion " thread?" (with a mere 51 posts) as well?

99
 
Originally posted by tampa
I understand your not wanting to provide free advertising, but you fail to understand how you go about it diminishes the value of the firms that do spend money with you.
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If I'm going about it wrong, then what would you suggest? What would you do if it were your site? I'm all ears.

Originally posted by agent99
Baron,

Earlier you closed the IB Improvements part 2 thread, but not before having removed a post of mine that talked about the censorship of Def.
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Your post was deleted because it had nothing to do with improving IB software, which was the topic of the thread. We delete or move off-topic posts everyday. This is nothing new.
 
Guys, this board is not about patriotism, freedom or censorship. You can argue that Baron is running his business wrong, but that's another matter. We are sadly mistaken if we believe that we have a right to post whatever we want on his forum, including spamming the same message on 5 lists like agent99 did earlier. That doesn't mean I'm not angry because of def being excluded because I AM.

It just happens that because this is a bulletin board that we are seeing the inner workings of EliteTrader. It isn't so different from any other commercial publication, such as a newspaper or magazine. On the surface those publications seem unbiased, fair and objective, but the reality is that advertiser dollars influence which stories run and which don't. Sometimes articles or portions of articles are cut because of "lack of space" or in other words because they criticize key advertisers. Big advertisers also get nice free advertising pieces from time to time. When a major advertiser pulls out it is no minor event, and I'm sure this is what Baron is struggling with. Why does a Futures magazine give away free subscriptions, and why do the same big advertisers in TASC always win the reader's choice awards? Just like the markets, EliteTrader is being run for the benefit of the big money, it wouldn't survive otherwise.

That being said, IB doesn't advertise and I doubt that they will change their business model to please EliteTrader. So where does this leave us? Frankly I think Baron is being shortsighted by not allowing def to post his technical and customer support. This doesn't mean def couldn't or shouldn't be censored when he crosses the line to sales. I and others like me who primarliy came to take part in the IB discussion will miss his postings. I just hope if def takes up residence on a different board, that he lets us know so we can follow him. Frankly I think EliteTrader would be even better if firms were encouraged to do technical support / customer service here. Where there is more information, there the people will flock. Baron might even attract a few more advertisers that way.
 
Baron,

When I go to a forum like ET I assume the advertisers are paying to have their banner adds posted, not to control the boards. I even click on the ads at times to support the forum. I never thought the advertisers were buying the rights to be the only people in the industry that would be allowed to post in the forum. Perhaps I was naive, I don't spend a whole lot of time on web sites - this is one of the first ones that seemed to be worth the time. I would like to see everyone be able to post.

Anyway, you have to make this sight pay, and if your advertisers insist on being the only ones who can post I guess you're kind of stuck. But, I never saw def hype his firm or try to recruit here. If users begin to see ET as an infomercial for a few firms rather than an open forum, I'm not sure what the outcome will be. On the other hand, there are always a lot of newbies, so maybe there will be a steady supply of new members. Good luck.

PS
I just read tripacks message, and I couldn't agree more. I would love to see more companies have cusomer info/tecnical info posted here. I wonder how many of them would be able to handle the exposure though.
 
Tripack, your post was right on target.

I agree with everything you said until this part:

Originally posted by TriPack
Frankly I think Baron is being shortsighted by not allowing def to post his technical and customer support.
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Here is the real question to ask. Who is paying for the infrastructure (servers, bandwidth, maintenance, programming, etc..) it takes for IB to provide support to its customers through this site? It's certainly not IB and it's not the customers either. It's the advertisers (a.k.a. IB competitors) that are paying for it! I can assure you that the other firms do not want to pay for IB or any other firms' support or customer relations costs. I mean, if I were an IB competitor, I know I wouldn't want to pay for it.
 
Originally posted by Baron
Tripack, your post was right on target.

I agree with everything you said until this part:



Here is the real question to ask. Who is paying for the infrastructure (servers, bandwidth, maintenance, programming, etc..) it takes for IB to provide support to its customers through this site? It's certainly not IB and it's not the customers either. It's the advertisers (a.k.a. IB competitors) that are paying for it! I can assure you that the other firms do not want to pay for IB or any other firms' support or customer relations costs. I mean, if I were an IB competitor, I know I wouldn't want to pay for it.
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But...

If this is what brings the members here to see the ads, what harm is done? I thought boards like this tried to attract members, and advertisers paid to have their adds seen by those members. If people come here to get technical advice about their software etc. and see ads for superior products/firms, they will respond to those ads and the advertisers will benefit.
 
Originally posted by Baron
... It's the advertisers (a.k.a. IB competitors) that are paying for it! I can assure you that the other firms do not want to pay for IB or any other firms' support or customer relations costs. I mean, if I were an IB competitor, I know I wouldn't want to pay for it.
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I think you are 100% wrong here. If I was an IB competitor, I would love as many IB customers to be on this site as possible. The more IB customers come, the more will see their advertisements. Who do you think they want to see their advertisement? Just people that they already have as customers? That doesn't make sense.

Think about this...

How much do you think Sun would pay to have an advertisement on Microsoft's support site?
 
thank for this kind of forum I found many thoughful post and useful software that otherwise I would have never came across; thoughful post = trader99, useful sopftware = try 2 and will subscribe to 1 as soon as I drop the one I have, tuff business to soothe this many voices, you have my sympathy.
 
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